Samuel nodded, listening to his mother as the three of them moved to sit down in the drawing room. It wasn’t news to him that his parents held accounts with all three of the major US banking corporations; they were a very well-off couple and so it made sense that they had spread that wealth around. He was pretty sure they had some money in offshore bank accounts as well, though he wasn’t sure of those details. Perhaps they were some of the lucky ones. They’d lose whatever percentage of their money was with Trident but should still be able to rely on the other pots of money. Though Samuel was uncertain for how long.
“Have you seen the statement Trident released?” Samuel asked his parents, addressing the question more to his father in the hope of a rational response. “About ransomware? I don’t understand it entirely but…”
“Ah yes,” Addison interrupted her son, “we looked it up. When an online hacker blocks access to an account until a ransom is paid. So, does that mean the money isn’t really gone, that we just can’t access it?”
“Theoretically,” Samuel nodded. “But in all honesty, I don’t know how long that will take or even if it’s accurate. There are a lot of people in the city who are questioning why anyone would hold money for ransom, when the ransom is for that money anyway.”
“Makes sense,” Charles nodded, “I had thought the same thing. I imagine the government and the other big banking groups will need to step in soon.”
“I agree. There’s got to be a list somewhere of all the organizations that Trident supported. Can I borrow your laptop? I think there’s something on our website actually.” Receiving his father’s laptop, Samuel began to navigate to the Trident website while continuing to explain what he knew. “You’ve got to think; Trident invested in oil, in food manufacturing, in infrastructure. They were – oh, that’s weird.”
“What?”
“The site won’t load. It says there’s an error.”
“Have you tried hitting refresh? Our wireless has been a bit on and off lately.”
Samuel did as his mother instructed, but it made little difference. Everything else was working; it was just the Trident site specifically that wouldn’t load. It was like it had been taken down, deliberately removed from the web.
“This isn’t good,” Samuel remarked, doing a couple of other searches to try and get something to load. “It looks like Trident has taken the page down. Like they’ve done this deliberately.”
“But why would they –”
“Yep,” Samuel cut off his father’s question. “Look at this.” Turning the laptop screen around to face his parents, he showed them a screen from a news site with the headline: An admission of guilt? Trident website shut down while billions remain unaccounted for.
“Oh dear,” Addison put a hand to her mouth and the other on her husband’s arm. “You don’t really think all that money is gone, do you?”
Charles looked at his son, deferring the question to him and hoping his job with Trident would have granted him some additional insight he hadn’t yet shared. Samuel shook his head. “I think it might be, mom. I don’t know how we’re going to get it back.”
“Oh my,” Addison breathed, grabbing hold of Charles with both hands now. A moment of silence fell among the family, each of them thinking about how this was going to affect them. Samuel still wanted to have hope that Trident could get the money back, but he couldn’t deny how guilty it looked that they had taken down their website. Even if the money could be regained now, the bank would be ruined. No one would trust them to keep their money safe again, the company was done for one way or another – it was now just a question of how many people would be brought down with it.
“How many different organizations did you say Trident had invested in, son?”
Charles patted his wife on the hand softly and leant forward, pulling a notebook and pen out from a drawer within the coffee table. Looking up expectantly at Samuel, he prepared to write, determined to not be caught off guard by what was about to happen to his country.
Samuel cleared his throat, understanding his father’s intentions. “There’s a lot,” he began. “Infrastructure – I remember working on a marketing campaign a couple of years back that highlighted the new builds just outside of the Bronx. We’ve been stepping up our support work for the community over the last decade or so and rebuilding the community and funding the maintenance of the city is a big part of that.”
“Okay,” Charles started scribbling down notes. “Infrastructure. What else?”
“Well, there’s the importation of goods,” Samuel thought for a moment. “We issue monthly loans to a large number of companies that are involved in the food supply to the city. Hospitals. Medicine. Power.” The list seemed to go on and on, the more Samuel thought about it, the more he realized how everything would be affected in some way by this disaster. Travel and transportation was something he highlighted more than once, telling his parents how difficult it had been to get out of the city already. He imagined the roads would soon be impassable, restricting people to their homes and the local area. JFK had already grounded all flights as he’d experienced first-hand. In a way he had to count himself lucky that he hadn’t been away on business when all of this happened.
“We should call Jessie,” he prompted his parents. “This is all over the news,
